Sheffield decided that Cimon did not know of Mark’s connection with the original decision to send out the expedition.
He sat upright, hands on knees, elbows cocked outward, and let a freezing formality settle over him. ”So you wonder about the function of mental science in an investigation such as this, Dr. Cimon. Suppose I told you that the end of the first settlement might possibly be explained on a simple, psychological basis.”
“It wouldn’t impress me. A psychologist is a man who can explain anything and prove nothing.” Cimon smirked like a man who had made an epigram and was proud of it
Sheffield ignored it. He said, “Let me go into a little detail. In what way is Junior different from every one of the eightythree thousand inhabited worlds?”
“Our information is as yet incomplete. I cannot say.”
“Oh, cobber-vitals. You had the necessary information before you ever came here. Junior has two suns.”
“Well, of course.” But the astrophysicist allowed a trace of discomfiture to enter his expression.
“Colored suns, mind you. Colored suns. Do you know what that means? It means that a human being, yourself or myself, standing in the full glare of the two suns, would cast two shadows. One blue green, one red orange. The length of each would naturally vary with the time of day. Have you taken the trouble to verify the color distribution in those shadows? The what-do-you-call-‘em-reflection spectrum?”
“I presume,” said Cimon loftily, “they’d be about the same as the radiation spectra of the suns. What are you getting at?”
“You should check. Wouldn’t the air absorb some wave lengths? And the vegetation? What’s left? And take Junior’s moon, Sister. I’ve been watching it in the last few nights. It’s in colors, too, and the colors change position.”
“Well, of course, damn it. It runs through its phases independently with each sun.”
“You haven’t checked its reflection spectrum, either, have you?”
“We have that somewhere. There are no points of interest about it. Of what interest is it to you, anyway?”
“My dear Dr. Cimon, it is a well-established psychological fact that combinations of red and green colors exert a deleterious effect on mental stability. We have a case here where the red-green chromopsychic picture (to use a technical term) is inescapable and is presented under circumstances which seem most unnatural to the human mind. It is quite possible that chromopsychosis could reach the fatal level by inducing hypertrophy of the trinitarian follicles, with consequent cerebric catatonia.”
Cimon looked floored. He said, “I never heard of such a thing.”
“Naturally not,” said Sheffield (it was his turn to be lofty). “You are not a psychologist. Surely you are not questioning my professional opinion.”
“No, of course not. But it’s quite plain from the last reports of the expedition that they were dying of something that sounded like a respiratory disease.”
“Correct, but Rodriguez denies that and you accepted his professional opinion.”
“I didn’t say it was a respiratory disease. I said it sounded like one. Where does your red-green chromothingumbob come in?”
Sheffield shook his head. “You laymen have your misconceptions. Granted that there is a physical effect, it still does not imply that there may not be a mental cause. The most convincing point about my theory is that red-green chromopsychosis has been recorded to exhibit itself first as a psychogenic respiratory infection. I take it you are not acquainted with psycho-genics.”
“No, It’s out of my field.”
“Well, yes. I should say so. Now my own calculations show me that under the heightened oxygen tension of this world, the psychogenic respiratory infection is both inevitable and particularly severe. For instance, you’ve observed the moon-Sister, I mean-in the last few nights.”
“Yes, I have observed Ilium.” Cimon did not forget Sister’s official name even now.
“You watched it closely and over lengthy periods? Under magnification?”
“Yes.” Cimon was growing uneasy.
“Ah,” said Sheffield. “Now the moon colors in the last few nights have been particularly virulent. Surely you must be noticing just a small inflammation of the mucus membrane of the nose, a slight itching in the throat. Nothing painful yet, I imagine. Have you been coughing or sneezing? Is it a little hard to swallow?”
“I believe I-” Cimon swallowed, then drew in his breath sharply. He was testing.
Then he sprang to his feet, fists clenched and mouth working. “Great galaxy, Sheffield, you had no right to keep quiet about this. I can feel it now. What do I do, Sheffield? It’s not incurable, is it? Damn it, Sheffield”-his voice went shrill- ”why didn’t you tell us this before?”
“Because,” said Sheffield calmly, “there’s not a word of truth in anything I’ve said. Not one word. There’s no harm in colours. Sit down, Dr. Cimon. You’re beginning to look foolish.”
“You said,” said Cimon, thoroughly confused, and in a voice that was beginning to strangle, “that it was your professional opinion that-”
“My professional opinion! Space and little comets, Cimon, what’s so magic about a professional opinion? A man can be lying or he can just plain be ignorant, even about the final details of his own specialty. A professional can be wrong because he’s ignorant of a neighboring specialty. He may be certain he’s right and still be wrong.
“Look at you. You know all about what makes the Universe tick and I’m lost completely except that I know that a star is something that twinkles and a light-year is something that’s long. And yet you’ll swallow gibberish psychology that a freshman student of mentics would laugh his head off at. Don’t you think, Cimon, it’s time we worried less about professional opinion and more about over-all co-ordination?”
The color washed slowly out of Cimon’s face. It turned waxy-pale. His lips trembled. He whispered, “You used professional status as a cloak to make a fool of me.”
“That’s about it,” said Sheffield.
“I have never, never-” Cimon gasped and tried a new start. “I have never witnessed anything as cowardly and unethical.”
“I was trying to make a point.”
“Oh, you made it. You made it.” Cimon was slowly recovering, his voice approaching normality. “You want me to take that boy of yours with us.”
“That’s right.”
“No. No. Definitely no. It was no before you came in here and it’s no a million times over now.”
“What’s your reason? I mean before I came in.”
“He’s psychotic. He can’t be trusted with normal people.”
Sheffield said grimly, “I’ll thank you not to use the word, ‘psychotic.’ You are not competent to use it. If you’re so precise in your feeling for professional ethics, remember to stay out of my specialty in my presence. Mark Annuncio is perfectly normal.”
“After that scene with Rodriguez? Yes. Oh, yes.”
“Mark had the right to- ask- his question. It was his job to do so and his duty. Rodriguez had no right to be boorish about it.”
“I”ll have to consider Rodriguez first, if you don’t mind.”
“Why? Mark Annuncio knows more than Rodriguez. For that matter, he knows more than you or I. Are you trying to bring back an intelligent report or to satisfy a petty vanity?”
“Your statements about what your boy knows do not impress me. I am quite aware he is an efficient parrot. He understands nothing, however. It is my duty to see to it that data is made available to him because the Bureau has ordered that. They did not consult me, but very well. I will co-operate that far. He will receive his data here in the ship.”